Commentary on technologies of reading, writing, research, and, generally, knowledge. As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered? And, not least, what’s fun?
By: Alan Jacobs
August 31, 2009
The smart guys over at Snarkmarket are thinking about how we'll be reading in 2020. I want to follow up on this later, but for now consider some of the questions they're asking: • What kind of devices will we use to read? • What formats will be used to deliver documents? • What kinds of documents will be...
August 31, 2009
Mi hart aeks, and a drouzy numnes paens Mi sens, as tho of hemlok I had drunk, Or emptyd sum dul oepiaet to the draens Wun minit past, and Lethe-wards had sunk. … The opening lines of Keats's 'Ode on a Nightingale' in SoundSpel, the simplified spelling system promoted by Ed Rondthaler, who just died at the age of 104.
August 28, 2009
August 26, 2009
I am notably deficient in visual imagination — at least I think I am. It may not be my problem. I have always found it extremely difficult, if mot impossible, to visualize objects, especially man-made ones, when they are described to me. I remember reading Iris Murdoch’s novel The Philosopher’s Pupil and struggling...
August 26, 2009
Name of applicant: Tolstoy, Leo (interviewed in England) We recommend something sensible from Marks & Spencer and a different hairdresser for the candidate to cut a more reputable figure at any future interview. While he scorned the beef sandwiches (although there were cheese and pickle too, and a vegan plate could have been ordered...
August 25, 2009
Cognitive control in media multitaskers ABSTRACT: Chronic media multitasking is quickly becoming ubiquitous, although processing multiple incoming streams of information is considered a challenge for human cognition. A series of experiments addressed whether there are systematic differences in information processing styles between...
August 24, 2009
Erin O’Connor, from a post that I’ve been thinking about for the past six months or so: English teachers are mediators. They are not ends in themselves. That’s how it should be, anyway. They are training wheels that young readers ought to be able to shed once they acquire the skills they need to read purposefully and...
August 24, 2009
I enjoy most of the books I read — I admire many of them — I adore some of them — but it is not often that I think “I have no words to express how desperately I wish I had written that.” But just such a longing consumed me as I read Arika Okrent’s scholarly yet delightful In the Land of Invented...
August 20, 2009
A video of Larry Lessig's talk on the Google Book Settlement — and its legal and technological background — is here. The talk is careful and nuanced, as is typical of Lessig, and while it gives me a great deal to think about, it really doesn't help me understand what I should do.
August 20, 2009
I like the general theme of this post very much — we do pay a price, often too high a price, for adding features to our software (and other things) — but this paragraph is wrong: A perfectly blank sheet of white paper is a tool of infinite possibility. For input you could use a pencil, a pen, a crayon, a marker, a stamp,...